KINGSTON >> The Hudson Valley will have a team in a ground-breaking professional coed basketball league that provides a level playing field.

Or, in this case, a level court.

Men and women will be playing together in the new Mixed Gender Basketball Association (MGBA) that officially debuts in July.

The league’s local entry has its first official practice Saturday at the Donlon Auditorium, 43 Partition St., in Saugerties. It will feature the 10 players who survived last month’s tryout at Bard College plus at least 20 more who received invitations.

Advertisement

Players interested in trying out should contact Heather Swart, the MGBA’s New York Director of Basketball Operations (845-389-9023) or Associate Director Reggie Ward (845-706-8839).

“They have to speak to one of us directly to get an invitation to come,” Swart said.

“People are calling us every day and they can, up until (Friday), to get a spot. Right now, there is nothing definite as far as players. We definitely have some players that are local to Kingston, that have our attention, but nothing set in stone,” Swart said about the team roster.

“They are not a part of the team, but have made it through the first cut.”

Locals invited back from the March tryout are Kingston High graduates Cordal Johnson and Shataya McComb, plus former Ulster County Community College players Charles Cornell and Alfonso Knox.

Another former Ulster player, Martin Dunkley, is the Hudson Valley team’s head coach.

Two teams have been formed after tryouts in New Jersey. There were auditions in Syracuse and Harlem last weekend and on Long Island April 26 and more planned for Brooklyn, Westchester and Buffalo.

“We’re going to have a team right here in the Hudson Valley,” said Swart, who is looking at the possibility of five New York teams competing in what would be the New England League of a North Conference that would include teams from Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Montreal.

“We’re looking at, potentially, Saratoga. We have Syracuse, potentially Buffalo and, of course, New York City. We have a lot of interest in basketball in the state of New York. So, where originally we were going to have one upstate team and one downstate team, the need has exceeded our expectations. People really want to see this going on.

“New York has taken us by storm,” she added. “It’s like everybody wants to have a team for the MGBA throughout the state of New York. It’s made us re-evaluate what we’re looking at in some of the other states as well.”

The plan is to have teams in every state, plus the District of Columbia, Montreal and Vancouver.

The Florida-based MGBA was conceived by Dr. John Howard Jr., a former Harlem Globetrotter.

Games will start with three men and two women on each team and alternate every quarter. At no time can there be less than two members of either gender on the court. If a woman hits a shot beyond the men’s 3-point line, it counts for four points.

That’s particularly big in what is called the “two-minute scramble” — the final two minutes of a game where the losing team can put in five women to take advantage of the 4-pointer.

“So there’s no leaving the game early, because anything can happen,” Ward said.

A Baiden men’s ball is the official basketball.

Swart and Ward are both Saugerties graduates.

Swart discovered the MGBA on the internet, sent her resume to Dr. Howard, who offered her the New York post last October.

It was Dr. Howard’s edict that equality be at all levels. When Swart was named, she was told she had to hire a male associate director. The same will be for coaching staffs. A 12-player team will be evenly split.

Players are currently trying out for a possible place on a team that would play exhibition games, but also for a chance to enter a league draft.

“Should one of the players up here catch the eye of one of the owners down in the city, they very possibly could get picked up, which is in their benefit,” Swart said. “The pay is much higher on a team that is already franchised.”

Players will be salaried on teams that have individual owners. Teams without owners will be playing for the MGBA.

“It’s pay-per-game,” Swart said about playing under the MGBA umbrella. “You’re talking between 300 and 500 dollars per game.”

The planned schedule would be a 40-game regular season running from July into the fall, bridging the WNBA and NBA seasons.

“That’s one of our mottos. ‘Equal pay for equal play,’” Swart noted. “Male-female. Doesn’t matter. Guard-forward. Thirty points a game, five points a game. You’re going to make the same amount of money.”

“This Hudson Valley team, we have a few potential buyers,” Swart revealed.

The Village Apothecary Pharmacy in Saugerties and the Joe Beez Restaurant in Kingston have already signed on as sponsors.

Minimum league age is 18, but college-age players are advised to consider options before losing NCAA eligibility.

“There are some coed leagues that are out there, not professional leagues. The difference between them is men have to guard men and women guard women,” Swart said. “In the MGBA, that is not the case. Here, coaches are going to coach for a mismatch. You want at times to have a male guarding a female and vice versa.”

The red, white and blue MGBA logo has a pony-tailed woman out-leaping a man. In the league’s first exhibition played in New Jersey, a woman blocked a man’s shot so hard a guard retrieved it near the perimeter.

Any player skepticism is eliminated during the actual tryout.

“We see a lot of men who come off the court just shocked at the different kind of game that women play, because women play a very fundamental basketball game. Men don’t have to rely on fundamentals as much as us women do. But these girls,..,” Swart said.

“At our Bard tryout, one of our players who has made the first cut turned to me. He stands 6-foot-7 and said, ‘I don’t how I’m to get around this screen.’ And there’s this girl, who can’t stand more than 5-5. ‘But her screen is so hard and getting me right in the side.’

“The girls are physical. They’re used to those fundamentals. When she set the screen, it was a very fundamental screen. It was strong. It was hard. It took him off guard, because he’s not use to that. They walk off that court after that first water break and they’re like, ‘These are girls we’re playing with?’”

It didn’t take long at the New Jersey exhibition for fans to get acclimated.

“One of the big things with the fans was that, in the first half, it was, ‘Oh look, there’s a woman. Oh, look there’s a man.’ And, by the second half, it was ‘Look at these ball players.’

“Some of the people that have questioned me the most about the league and been the most skeptical before the tryout walked out of that tryout probably being our biggest supporter.

“When they leave the tryout, word of mouth is great. Now they’re bragging about it and they’re excited and they’re seeing everything that we’ve been saying all along.”

Talent is important, but so is chemistry.

“You could have a phenomenal male athlete that doesn’t want to give the ball to a woman and this just isn’t the league for him,” Swart remarked. “In addition to looking at your talent and your ability o play basketball, we have to look at your chemistry to play mixed gender.”

Once a roster is finalized, the area team will be part of a “Shattering The Glass Ceiling” exhibition tour throughout the valley and the state before the season officially begins. It will play at facilities throughout the region for its “home” games during the regular campaign.

Among area locations looking to host games are Bard and Ulster County Community College.

“Kingston High School is looking to work with us as far as hosting a game which is great,” Swart said. “What I would love to have is the Hudson Valley’s first game right here in Kingston.”

Interest in the revolutionary MGBA is escalating. The New York Times and New York Daily News have done stories and a recent WWOR-TV report got national exposure on FOX News.

“People are blogging about it in Mississippi. It’s getting out there and that’s all been in the past week,” Swart noted.

“It came at a perfect time and it’s really caught on. The interest is definitely there.”